


Maybe The Universe Has Other Plans

by Cones_McMurphy



Category: Green Gables Fables
Genre: 5+1 fic except it's 4+1, F/M, Unbeta'd, but it's late and I'm tired and I really just want this up, everything is a disaster for poor Gilbert, lightly edited, proposal fic, there is one swear word in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cones_McMurphy/pseuds/Cones_McMurphy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s been three months. Three months since the last time Gilbert visited his folks. Three months since he helped his dad clean out the attic. Three months since he found his Grandma Dora’s engagement ring in an old, dusty chest, underneath even dustier smocks and a pile of old newspapers. At the time, Gil had taken it as a sign. His dad had been looking for that ring for years after Grandma Dora passed away, and Gil found it by happenstance. Gilbert wasn’t a particularly superstitious man, but (and maybe this was just what came from spending so much time with Anne Shirley), he couldn’t help but think it was, at the very least, an impressive and unusual coincidence. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about marriage before, but usually those thoughts included a “someday” and didn’t happen when he was holding an gorgeous, one-of-a-kind engagement ring that also happened to be a family heirloom. For the first time, the idea of marrying Anne Shirley became a very real, very tangible possibility, and not just a daydream." </p><p>Four times Gilbert Blythe tries to propose to Anne Shirley and fails, and the one time he doesn't try and succeeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe The Universe Has Other Plans

It’s been three months. Three months since the last time Gilbert visited his folks. Three months since he helped his dad clean out the attic. Three months since he found his Grandma Dora’s engagement ring in an old, dusty chest, underneath even dustier smocks and a pile of old newspapers. At the time, Gil had taken it as a sign. His dad had been looking for that ring for years after Grandma Dora passed away, and Gil found it by happenstance. Gilbert wasn’t a particularly superstitious man, but (and maybe this was just what came from spending so much time with Anne Shirley), he couldn’t help but think it was, at the very least, an impressive and unusual coincidence. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about marriage before, but usually those thoughts included a “someday” and didn’t happen when he was holding an gorgeous, one-of-a-kind engagement ring that also happened to be a family heirloom. For the first time, the idea of marrying Anne Shirley became a very real, very tangible possibility, and not just a daydream.

 

**Attempt #1:**

Gilbert decides that it has to be summer, which in retrospect may not have been the best decision, as it’s blistering hot and all Anne wants to do is stay inside with the blinds drawn. “C’mon,” Gil urges, the weight of Grandma Dora’s engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket, “This is the first day I’ve had off in two weeks. I want to _do_ something. What about a picnic?”

Anne groans from the couch, “It’s too hot.”

“C’mon, Shirley! It’s beautiful outside.” He wants to make it sound spontaneously, but the truth is, he’s been planning it pretty much since the day he found the ring. He bought a small, moleskine reporter’s notebook, and between 36 hour shifts at the hospital (no rest for the residents) and actually spending time with his girlfriend of nine years, he’d jot down every idea he had in that little notebook. He takes it with him everywhere, to the point where his friends at the hospital make a running joke about it. It had to be perfect. He’s proposing to Anne Shirley, after all, the love of his life, and lover of all things grand and romantic. If it isn’t amazing and beautiful and dazzlingly romantic, he’ll never live it down.

“Fine. We’ll go on a picnic,” Anne acquiesces. Gil grins, and picks her up off the couch princess style.

“Yes! Finally!” He spins her around in excitement.

“Gil!” She shouts.

“What?”

“Put me down!” She squirms under his firm grip, and he does as he’s told.

“Okay, okay,” he says breathlessly, setting her gently back down on the couch, “Let’s get ready for this super awesome picnic.” He extends his hand to pull her to her feet.

“I can’t believe I’m about to go outside into that awful heat,” she shakes her head, “I must really love you, Gilbert Blythe.”

“I love you, too, Anne Shirley.”  

The picnic is almost perfect. They find a shady spot, spread their blanket, and Gil hands Anne the basket he prepared of all her favorite foods. If Anne notices the buckets of nervous sweat running down Gil’s face, she writes it off as the heat. He waits until the food is mostly finished before he starts, his voice shaking.

“Anne, um...We’ve been together, for, you know, a long time, and uh,” he starts, immediately forgetting the speech he’d constructed in his head a week earlier.

“Gil.”

“I want to spend--”

“GILBERT!” She tries to yell, but it comes out a croak, and he finally notices the panic in her eyes.

“Anne, Are you okay?”

 “No,” she manages in a gruff voice. For the first time he sees the red swelling on her arm, and his eyes widen. “Epipen.” Gil scrambles up and reaches for her bag, and her epipen.

 _“Orange to the thigh, blue to the sky,”_ he mumbles to himself as he plunges the needle into her leg. His hands are steady, the hands of a doctor, and he’s suddenly extremely grateful for four years of medical school and almost two years of residency. He calls 911 even as her breathing returns to normal, because you can never be too careful, and lays her down on her back to wait.

“Sorry,” she manages.

“Anne,” Gil sighs, “Don’t worry about it.”

 

 

**Attempt #2**

After the picnic fiasco, Gil starts completely from scratch. This time, it’s going to be indoors, away from bees. He fills two pages of his moleskine notebook with restaurant names and addresses, and scopes each one out, before he settles on a place with large windows, crystal chandeliers, and a marble bar-top. The whole place seems to sparkle. Another point in the restaurant's favor is the air conditioning; Anne can’t complain about it being too hot this time. He makes the reservations in person and asks them to hide the ring in Anne’s dessert (because he knows her, and knows she’s going to order cake). The head chef turns out to be a hopeless romantic and is more than happy to oblige. “Slip me the ring towards the end of the main course,” he says with smile, “Tell her you need to use the washroom.”   

When the time comes, Gil does as he's told, and returns to their table just in time to catch Anne stealing a bite of his mashed potatoes. “Anne Shirley,” he exclaims as he sits back down, “I caught you red handed.”

“I don’t know what you mean," she shakes her head, playing purposefully dense, "My hands aren't red at all." 

“Okay...Potato forked,” Gil laughs, “I caught you potato forked.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“I can make a thing if I want,” Gil says defiantly, “but that’s besides the point.”

“Fine,” Anne sighs, “I’m sorry I stole your mashed potatoes.”

“Not good enough.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you get some of my food, I get some of yours.”

“Oh, what are you, twelve?” Anne rolls her eyes as Gil reaches across the table and takes a roasted carrot from her side of seasonal vegetables.

“An eye for an--” In that exact moment the in-case-of-emergency sprinkler system goes off, drenching them both, “Eye?” Gil finishes, exasperated.

There was a fire in the kitchen, they’re informed as they’re guided out by the frazzled wait staff who can’t seem to stop apologizing for the inconvenience, as if _they_ , and not the chefs, were responsible. Gilbert wants the ground to open him up and swallow him whole. He’s failed. Again.

“Hey,” Anne says softly, noticing the disappointment on his face, “It’s okay. We’re a little bit wet, but it was still a good date.”

“I know.”

“Are you upset because of how expensive it was because they never actually brought us the check, so it’s like we actually paid--” He cuts her off with a kiss because despite the fact that the nice dress she wore is probably ruined, she’s worrying about him, and somehow he falls a little more in love with her.

 

 

**Attempt #3**

It takes Gilbert three weeks of incessant calling to get the ring back from the restaurant. In those three weeks he spends all his free time trying to think of another way to propose. He decides that maybe he needs to do something more personal, something from the comfort of their own apartment, but that’s as far as he gets until the day he gets Grandma Dora’s ring back. He googles “romantic proposal ideas” and clicks through a few results before hitting on a site that recommends a slideshow or video of “you and your love,” and it hits him. Anne hasn’t vlogged in years, but it was a super important part of her life, and the beginning of their story is still up on the internet for everyone to see, so why not this new chapter?

He films on a Saturday, the next time he's off work, while Anne is out running errands. He records the whole thing on his webcam because he doesn’t have his camera anymore and after several dozen takes, he’s satisfied. And hungry. Turns out proposing over and over again is hard work. He makes himself a ham and cheese sandwich and a lemonade and sits down at his laptop to cut out all the “ums” and prolonged pauses from his video. He’s just finishing up when he hears the front door open and shut, and Anne’s voice call out, “Gilbert! I’m home!” Gilbert jumps up and hits his desk with his knee, causing his glass of lemonade to fall. On his very much not waterproof laptop.

“Fuck.”

“Gilbert?” Anne calls again, poking her head into the room. She notices the lemonade dripping off his desk, and his fried laptop. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“H-hi, Anne,” he clears his throat awkwardly, “Clearly, I-I spilled. On my computer.”

“Gil,” she shakes her head and moves toward him, taking his hands in hers, “Why on Earth were you drinking lemonade in front of your computer? That’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

“I was working on something.”

“What could possibly be important enough that you couldn’t take a break for lunch?”

“Um,” Gil swallows, “Just work stuff,”  he practically squeaks out, “You know, making sure all my paperwork for all my patients is filled out.” Anne raises a skeptical eyebrow, but, probably noticing the panic in her boyfriend’s eyes, decides to let it go for now.

“Alright. Come help me with the groceries.”

“As you wish.”

 

 

**Attempt #4:**

This time he comes up with the idea all on his own. It’s a month after the lemonade debacle, and he’s keenly aware that he’s running out of summer--it's almost August. Anne is going to start prepping for the next school year sooner rather than later, and once school starts, they'll both be too busy for anything special.

The idea comes to him at the tail end of a 36 hour shift at the hospital, when he walks into the break room, picks up a whiteboard marker, and checks off his break on the big dry erase calendar on the wall. It reminds him of one of his first interactions with Anne Shirley. He was smitten from the first moment he saw her, but he went about it all wrong, and he knows that now. Because she whacked him over the head with her locker-board. And that was really where it all began. It would be full circle, he thinks as he chugs down a coffee, if he proposed on a magnetic locker-board. That night (well, really, early morning) when gets off work, he heads to Staples and picks one up.

Of course, he’s too tired to do anything when gets home and he leaves his shopping bag on the kitchen counter before collapsing to bed. He wakes late in the afternoon and shuffles out to the kitchen to see the locker-board he bought up on the refrigerator with a grocery list on it and a short note: _Great idea, Gil. I'm going through some lesson plans for next year today, it would be great if you could do the shopping. Hope work was okay. Love, Anne_. There’s a heart after her name, because of course there is, and he sighs. No way he’s erasing that.

 

 

**+1**

Gilbert has a series of long shifts that week, and doesn’t get the chance to set up the locker-board proposal, because the vision in his head involves candles and rose petals and romantic music and that's way too much to do in a short amount of time. He’s starting to wonder if maybe he was wrong about Grandma Dora’s ring being a sign. All of his proposals seem to be going wrong in one way or another. There’s no doubt in his mind that he wants to spend the rest of his life with Anne Shirley, but, and maybe it’s the exhaustion of a long shift talking, but when he comes home at 4 AM on Monday night (technically Tuesday morning) and collapses into bed his last waking thought is _maybe I shouldn’t propose to Anne, maybe the universe has other plans._  

He wakes up to an empty bed and a cold spot where Anne should be. He rolls out of bed and heads into the kitchen to see Anne at the counter with mug of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal, and a small notebook in her hands. It takes him all of 5 seconds to realize what that it is, and another 5 seconds to realize it’s full of proposal ideas. “Um,” he says, voice still thick with sleep. “How...What...Where did you find that?”

“You left it right here on the kitchen counter yesterday before work, I didn’t know what it was…” she trails off.

“Oh.” Gil really doesn’t know what to say.

“You’re going to propose to me?” Anne asks in a small voice.

“Well, yeah...if that’s what you want,” he rubs the back of his neck nervously, “I know we’ve talked about it before, but that was always so abstract.”

“Of course, it’s what I want, Gil,” Anne laughs, and Gil smiles slowly. There’s a comfortable pause, before Anne breaks the silence with a sharp, “ _Well_?”

“Well, what?” Gil blinks.

“Well, are you going to propose or not?” Anne asks in a chirping voice.

“You mean right now? In my pajamas? In our kitchen? While you eat oatmeal?”

“Why not?” Anne shrugs.

“Well, I...Don’t you want it to be romantic?”

“Gil,” Anne says softly, “I read this whole book. I know all of your proposal plans. The picnic, the restaurant, the magnetic locker-board. I know how hard you’ve been trying,” she smiles, “In my book, that’s pretty romantic.”

“Oh.”

“Now, the one thing I didn’t see in this book was the speech, so let’s hear it.”

“I memorized it,” Gil shrugs. “But, if I’m going to do this, I need the ring.” It’s in his sock drawer. He darts down the hall, furiously digs through his sock drawer to find it, and is back out in the kitchen in front of her in seconds. He takes a moment to catch his breath and then sinks down on one knee, and opens the ring box, “Anne, I love you. I've always loved you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I have a dream," his voice cracks slightly, and he clears his throat, "I have a dream that I’ve been dreaming since we were teenagers. Back then, it never seemed like it could come true, and recently with all the mishaps in proposing, it seemed a little like a sign from the universe.” Anne rolls her eyes at this, but Gil continues, “But I kept dreaming," he shakes his head, "No, I  _keep_ dreaming. I dream of a real home, not just a little apartment, with a fireplace, a cat and a dog, the footsteps of friends, and you, Anne Shirley.” He takes a deep breath before finishing, “Will you make me the happiest guy in the world, and marry me?”

Anne nods through her tears. “Yes, yes!” she manages. He stands up, grinning wildly and slips Grandma Dora’s ring on her finger. “It’s beautiful.”

“It was my grandmother’s. I found it the last time I visited my folks. Remember how my dad made me clean out the attic? It was under these old newspapers, which were cool but kind of dusty--” He’s cut off by her lips on his. He melts into the kiss almost immediately, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close.

“I love you,” she breathes when they pull back.

“I love you, too, Shirley.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
